I am a trader with goods located in Florida, New York, Northern Ireland, Great Britain, and Germany. So I am unfortunately well versed in customs and taxation laws and rules...
Five ongoing problems concerning sellers:
a) based in any country and with items located in Northern Ireland being advertised to buyers in EU countries and/or being dispatched to EU countries
b) based in any country and with items in EU countries being advertised to buyers in Northern Ireland and/or being dispatched to Northern Ireland
1. invalid message being displayed to EU browsers about potential customs charges and delays (existed since January 01 2021) -- there are no customs charges or even customs examinations of non-freight and non-excise movements of goods between Northern Ireland and EU member states, indeed since December 31 1972, the day before the United Kingdom joined the EU
2. inability to elect Northern Ireland as the EU One Stop Shop registration country on the page https://www.ebay.co.uk/spr/vat (existed since the date eBay integrated OSS VAT-rate calculations in their website logic, around early June 2021 iirc)
3. (caused by same causes of issue 1) Northern Ireland is excluded from the location category 'European Union' despite that since January 01 2021 all goods located in Northern Ireland and to be transported to EU member states are to be considered as being in the EU. This is written in law (EU: Protocol on Ireland and Northern Ireland; UK: Northern Ireland Protocol) and that it is not in the EU should not be a reason to exclude it from this category, considering that it must follow the same rules as EU member states when it comes to the sale and transit of goods.
4. (caused by same causes of issue 1) Northern Ireland is not listed as a separate country on the country dropdown list (it is not a sovereign state, but it is a country with distinct VAT and customs rules, and because eBay deals primarily with facilitating transactions involving goods, Northern Ireland should be a distinct entry on this list) -- related issues include sellers in countries outside Northern Ireland and Great Britain not being able to specify or exclude shipping to either of these, sellers outside UK not having accurate sales data for tax reporting (especially important for excise transactions)
5. eBay help pages barely mention Northern Ireland, despite that the rules concerning it are complex. eBay help pages do not mention customs rules related to goods movements between EU member states and Northern Ireland. eBay help pages use the term 'United Kingdom' in many places where it should be 'Great Britain', with regard to the legislation The Protocol on Ireland and Northern Ireland (EU law) and The Northern Ireland Protocol (UK law). This has the unfortunate effect of giving little to no help to eBay customer support so they can find out how to resolve the problem.
Problems started January 01 2021 when eBay applied rules concerning Great Britain to Northern Ireland, despite that there are two sets of rules for these regions respectively. Efforts to get customer service to resolve any of the above issues to date have been unsuccessful, most likely because they are not familiar with the rules and those rules are not mentioned in eBay's help pages. Rules summarised on page 9 of https://ec.europa.eu/info/sites/default/files/brexit_files/vat-goods_en.pdf
I have companies registered on ebay.com, ebay.co.uk, ebay.fr, ebay.de, and ebay.ie. The problems are the same on all of these sites, so I assume they exist for all the eBay sites. The problems persist across accounts, browsers, and devices
Attached image shows the missing checkbox beside Northern Ireland. Northern Ireland is not an EU member state but Northern Ireland uses EU Union One Stop Shop, just like all EU member states. It is unique in this regard, because it is outside the EU yet it uses the internal EU One Stop Shop, because goods movements from Northern Ireland to EU and vice versa are considered intra-EU movements. Page is https://www.ebay.com/spr/vat
